Those words are a paraphrase of those spoken by a committed South African activist who was encouraging civil society at the 2006 U.N. General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) AIDS meeting to risk our badges by protesting the disgustingly weak consensus document reached by member nations. (She was successful in getting us to take action. You can read a blog about that protest here.)
I am reminded of her words as I think about how civil society has responded to the PEPFAR reauthorization bill that has now passed both the House and Senate committees and is headed to the floor of both chambers for a vote. I have been shocked over the last few weeks by the number of organizations and prominent individuals who have responded positively, or even neutrally, to the compromise bill. Some who have been through these processes before eagerly remind the more outraged among us that this is how it works: you simply don't make great leaps forward on these issues.
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When it's time to draw the line in the sand, which side are you on? Are you on the side of a comfortable Washington, D.C. NGO existence that won't push the envelope beyond the agreeable gray area of compromise? Or are you on the side of the billions of people around the world who suffer as a result of (and simultaneously resist) our complacency and tacit complicity in a global system that robs their nations of resources, exploits their labor, prevents access to life-saving medicines and contraceptive supplies, and floods their communities with ideological misinformation about sex and sexuality?
It's time to let go of our delusions about what we continue to permit our world to look like today. It's time that we stand together, knowing that we have let this slide too far, and say in unison: The PEPFAR reauthorization legislation is a sell-out.
You might say I'm overreacting. But give yourself an advocate's reality check. Ask yourself why you do this work - what does it mean for you to be an "advocate"? Then, ask yourself why you are saying that this bill is acceptable (or that it's acceptable for us not to resist it). Maybe you're protecting an organizational position on the issues, Congressional relationships, respectability in the media, or community approval. Or maybe you're protecting your need to believe that the last five years of work to change PEPFAR have paid off.
As the final part of your advocate's reality check, ask yourself what these relationships, this "respectability," approval, or sense of accomplishment are worth if they don't help us challenge the misogynist, racist, nationalist, capitalist, homophobic system that let the AIDS pandemic take hold as it did. Are they worth the lives they cost?
My personal reality check leads me to conclude that it's time to stop deluding ourselves. We need to realize that:
- An appearance of bi-partisanship is NOT more important than the lives of millions of people separated from us by race, nation, or HIV-status.
- We will NOT stand by while even the most progressive members of Congress decide to fall into line rather than stand their ground and put up a fight for what's right. We can, and we will, make them accountable for their actions.
- Money does not solve everything, especially when that money has strings attached, especially when that money ends up lining the pocketbooks of U.S. government contractors and organizations doing the ideological bidding of the Administration, and especially when that money goes to programs that advance U.S. global hegemony.
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